'This Week' Transcript: Leahy and Sessions

TAPPER: Hello again. Breaking this morning, the White House has
sent a letter to the National Archives, urging immediate release of
160,000 pages of documents from Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's time
in the Clinton White House. This comes as she heads to Capitol Hill
this week for another round of meetings to shore up her support as
Republicans increase her attacks against her.

Joining me this morning exclusively, chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, Democratic Senator Pat Leahy. He's at Lyndon State College
in Vermont, where he will give the commencement address later today.
And here with me in the studio, the top Republican from the Senate

Senator Leahy, I'll start with you. Just a quick question of
timing. When do you expect these confirmation hearings to begin, around
the end of June?

LEAHY: Well, I'm going to sit down this week with Senator
Sessions. We'll work out a time. I think her questionnaire will
probably come back in the next day or so, the questionnaire we sent from
the Senate Judiciary Committee, and we'll work out a time.

Her predecessor, of course, was confirmed in two and a half weeks

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from the time he was nominated, Justice John Paul Stevens. I don't
anticipate that, but we have a pretty good track record. Chief Justice
Roberts and Justice Sotomayor ended up taking exactly the same amount of
time, and we can follow a schedule roughly like that, we'll be done this
summer.

TAPPER: While I have you, Senator Leahy, I want to ask you about an
essay that Elena Kagan wrote for the University of Chicago Law Review in
1995, in which she criticized Supreme Court confirmation hearings. She
said, they are, quote, "These hearings have presented to the public a
vapid and hollow charade in which repetition of platitudes has replaced
discussion of view points, and personal anecdotes have supplanted legal
analysis."

Didn't she have a point? Haven't these hearings become in the last
few decades a way for nominees to avoid answering questions on how they
will rule on a specific issue?

LEAHY: Well, for one thing, I talked to her about that essay. She
said I think I'm probably going to hear that quoted back to me a few
times during the hearing. I said, starting with me. But you know, it's
a doubled-edged sword. If you ask a nominee about certain burning
issues of the day, they are issues that are probably going to go to the
Supreme Court, and they have to be very careful not to say how they
might rule on a case that's coming up. Otherwise they're going to have
to recuse themselves and not be able to hear that case. On the other
hand, there's only 100 people who get to vote on this lifetime nominee.
We have to represent 300 million Americans, and so we have to ask as
good questions as we can to make up our mind just how we're going to vote.

TAPPER: Senator Sessions, what do you want to ask her? What are
you most interested in hearing from her?